Infrastructure Security KPI’s

One of the single most important parts of running a business is maintaining a high level of security. Without a high level of security, there is a chance you could fall victim to a hack or data breach. With the number of data breaches skyrocketing recently it is more important than ever to protect your infrastructure and company as a whole.

With that in mind, this article is going to look at several different security KPIs (key performance indicators) so you can ensure your company and the information/data you hold, can be safe.

Amount of Staff Aware Of Security Practices

In a modern day company, it is important for everyone (not only those in IT) to be aware of the security measures your company uses. As a result, it is important to track the amount of staff that are aware of your security practices.

Now, just because staff is aware of the security measures and practices in place, that doesn’t mean they need access to all the private and sensitive information. There are tools out there (such as https://www.solarwinds.com/access-rights-manager) that can help you manage and track who has access to sensitive information, so only the ones you want to have access, will have access.

Number of Security Incidents

Of course, it should be the goal of every company to have zero security incidents, but that is often wishful thinking. You need to keep track of your security incidents over time and do all you can to come up with ways to limit them or at least make them less harmful.

Many companies will further split this up into looking at major incidents and minor incidents. Major incidents are the big ones that cost you a lot of time and money, while minor incidents might have just led to some annoyances and frustration. Keeping track and looking for patterns in these is important for preventing them in the future.

Cost Per Incident

In addition to tracking the incident themselves, it is also a good idea to keep track of the costs of each incident. It is a good idea to of course look at the monetary cost of the incident, but to also be aware of how many people were affected by the incident in total. If only a few people were involved, the cost for the incident might be small, but if it affected millions the cost potential could be astronomical.

In addition to direct costs, there are often non-monetary costs that need to be considered as well. It is a good idea to sit down with your team and talk about the fallout of the incident and the costs of things like rebuilding relationships, damage control, PR campaigns, overtime, the investigations and more.

Amount of Downtime Experienced

While it can often be avoided with certain incidents, downtime is something that unfortunately takes place from time to time. Downtime takes place when your company, website or web applications are down and unavailable to be used, often caused by an error or security incident.

Not only does this stop your company in its tracks and waste a lot of time and annoy employees and customer alike, it can also cost your company a lot of money. In fact, the average cost of an infrastructure failure can be over $100,000 per hour. As a result, you should be sure to try catch security issues as soon as possible and try to rectify them before downtime ever occurs.

Incident Resolution Time

In a business sense, time is money. The longer it takes for an incident to be resolved and fixed, the more money your company will lose. Tracking the time of each incident is important and there are a variety of tools that can help you out with that. The time of an incident starts when it is discovered and ends once it’s over and the final wrap-up meeting has concluded.

Also, with the incident taking a lot of people away from other work, other business areas might have lagged behind, so it couldn’t hurt to also keep track of how much time will need to be spent to get your company back caught up with everything. Over time, it should be a goal of your company to try get your incident resolution time lower and lower, to save both time and money.

In conclusion, knowing about and keeping track of these security key performance indicators can help your infrastructure and business as a whole remain safe and up and running. Without keeping track of these KPIs and others like them, you run the risk of not knowing how secure you are and not being able to track any security-related problems your company might be experiencing.

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